Imaginary Music and Left Handed Violinists

 

You know those days when you have a song stuck in your head? Today has been one of those days. I woke up with it swirling around and knew then that it could be an all day affair. Steve was still asleep when I got out of bed. He was snoring and that is a rare thing because he has a couple of private peculiarities and that he does not usually snore is one of them. He has a bit of ‘ManFlu’ going on at the moment and has a sore throat and a tickly cough and did not join me in any exercise this weekend. He drove me to the start of our run, set me up with a watch on one hand and his sports tracker thing on my other wrist, one of my peculiarities is that I don’t wear a heart monitor or sports watch normally. He set me off five minutes before my friend Brigit, who starts after me and we do the tortoise and hare thing, meeting somewhere along the route. He then said he would walk a bit, then sit and listen to the radio and meet me when I got back. It was the most glorious day but cold. I had two thermal layers on my top and tights. No hat because I always claim that my thick curly hair is warmer than a hat but I do wear one when my hair is wet when I start my run as it is after swim days. 

The woods are always lovely but today, so far into such a lovely autumn, not so dark but still as deep as ever, with probably a third of the leaves off the trees and on the path which I love to rustle through. One good storm now will let the light fully in when the canopy has been blasted for a few days. The only noise this morning was Alexander Armstrong singing in my head as he had been most of the night and all the early morning. The song worrying my brain was McArthur Park. The trouble with this is that I don’t know the words in the right order so it ended up today being a more peculiar song than usual. It is a quite disturbing piece of secret poetry and I seem only to have the repeated section lodged in my head, you know, the bloody ‘Someone left a cake out in the rain, I don’t think that I can take it cos it took so long to bake it and I’ll never have that recipe again. Oh noooooooooo o-oh noooooooo. Apart from that and Macarthur Park is melting in the dark la laa lalalalalala. The scary fact though is this; I checked on t’internet; it was 1968 that Richard Harris sang that. Richard Armstrong (Yes that’s him on Pointless) sang it in Chichester last Friday and very well too and now I am stuck with it for a while. A song born again to me after nearly fifty years. 

The other thing still bothering me from last Fridays concert is the rather cruel fact that all musicians playing in a full scale orchestra cannot be left handed. I come from and age when some schools and even some families tried to stop left handed and of course left minded people, from being left handed. My brother was one of those people and he ended up with a nervous eye tick from being made to write right handed. Imagine then if you love music and want to play the violin or the cello. You cannot help but notice that all string section musicians play in the usual manner and it must be hell for them to learn. You may think logically that the hard part, the fingering on the strings is done with the left hand and so that must be easier, leaving the right hand that the lefty does not want to use for the working the bow, looks easier doesn’t it, MMM I don’t think so. Maybe learning standing opposite the teacher using the mirror image  could work. If only it were so simple. But it is not just a question of reversing the strings is it. I don’t play but I an interested enough to believe that the bridge would also need to be built differently. So all this tells why, even if you have the money for a special instrument to be made, I have private unchecked doubts that the great instrument makers make left handed violins. 

During the concert by the BBC Concert orchestra I found that during the instrumental pieces if the programme when there was not a singer to focus upon, that my eyes were riveted to one of the double bass players, my dad, who was a musician in his youth would have called him, in his soft Yorkshire accent, ‘A cack-handed lad’. I spent much of the evening watching this man play. Whereas all other string instrument players held a nice high elbow position with a delicately lifted wrist, this one musician held the bow with his elbow down in a completely reverse position to the usual one. He also held the double bass turned toward the bowing hand and in addition to all this he quite often held the bow with just his first finger and thumb with his middle, ring and little finger splayed out like a ballet dancer, I could not take my eyes off him and that involved me turning my head to the right away from the conductor. I could only think that he might possibly be left handed. 

My husband never tells me that I am barmy to worry about things like this but then if we could have any animal in the world for a pet, he would want an elephant and I think I would like a sloth! Friends that I swim train with all know that I choose to listen to music in my head whilst I swim. I don’t get bored.